we've been talking about a rooftop asian street food party for a while. Kimie made somen, yakisoba and okonomiyaki. Yumi made shui mai, Foo made tortang talang (filipino eggplant omleette thing). Jen made Korean kimbap and fried tofu. I made bindaedduk.

Kimie at work on her awesome electric teppan grill making yakisoba

we had a bunch of people. The weather was oppressively hot but it rained right before we were supposed to go to the roof and it brought a 20 degree temperature drop bringing it down to under 75 degrees. The weather was perfect, and the company was great. Even Virginia and Chris came.

we saved the bindaedduk (fried mungbean pancakes, you have to soak the beans overnight and grind them up) for later at night after alcohol soaked people were ready for it.

afterwards we hobbled down to Buttermilk for some fun and games.

the view from Bartlett's rooftop. He would have a baby in 10 days time.

oh but look who it is, Steven and Kimie randomly meeting their friend's dog at a bakery.

made more the next day for dinner.

the gym expansion downstairs, used to be just in the part of the building kind of nextdoor to us, soon it will be on both sides of us. There is already a new huge Crunch fitness directly across the street from us and also a kickboxing place. There seems to be on average 2 small gym, boxing, taekwondo, karate, yoga, crossfit, fitness place per block in our neighborhood now. They keep opening up

summer sunsets on the roof make you forget totally how bad winter is

Bob, Jen, and I met in greenpoint after she left the photoshoot she was on to see our DNA test results. Bob agonized over this and had sleepless nights over this because the tests could tell you that you have the genes for parkinsons, alzheimers, and maybe the worst, huntingtons. I've always been told that I don't look Korean so it would be interesting to see if that's true. No one has done a DNA thing in Jen's family. As adopted kids Bob and I have more to gain from these tests than normal people I suppose. That is if you want to know stuff, which bob did not, but he agreed to it anyway. Bob has had a somewhat defeatist attitude towards his health so he was thinking he was going to get a bad test result. I know this because when it came time to look at our results sitting at the table he went first. No one had used the app yet so it took some acclimating and bob saw 44 reports for carrier status, tapped it and saw Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Anemia, Tay-Sachs Disease, Tyrosinemia Type 1 and on and on and was nodding and looking bad and we asked whats up bob and with eyes wide he said yea I got it all. And then 30 seconds later he went, oh wait, and it turns out you have to click through to read some reports to see your results and that he didn't have any of it. None of us have any big bad diseases or conditions. For 30 seconds Bob thought he had all the worst conditions known to man coming his way. I find it morbidly funny and of course bob does not. We were all nervous about our health section results and relieved to know we are all genetically good. Bob is 99.8 percent Korean, I'm 94.6% and Jen was 93%. So nothing crazy or dramatic was learned. I'm not Chinese and bob's not the glass man. Bob technically had the best DNA outcome of all of us because his chances of type II diabetes is only 14%, mine is 32% and Jen's is 18%

framed prints ready to ship. I found out you're not supposed to use duct tape at the post office but the lady let it slide.

Mala Project in the east village is excellent. Mala means that numbing spicy feeling like from sichuan pepper corns. I love mala and sichuan food and came expecting mala tang street food with liquid broth but they specialize in dry bowls here which i looked up and is a new trend out there. It's delicious and I recommend it and don't go for the level 4 spicy cuz level 3 got pretty intense for a bit there and I can eat spicy. They have this tray of spices they use if you inquire

never seen this kind of Tsingtao before.

Seems like half of these are from Jen's parents and half of them are from my parents. I took them to get converted so we'll find out soon enough.

Current Location

New York, New York

More about me

I was on an adventure around the world that ended up being 5 years. I lived 1.5 yrs in Beijing from June '08, 1.5 yrs in Tokyo from Sept '09, Barcelona for 3 months in summer '11, 5 months in London from August '11, NYC for 3 months, 2 month Asia trip, NYC for summer 2012, 1 year in Paris until Fall '13 (I got an artist's visa!), and now live in back in NYC. I am a freelance Illustrator working for magazines, newspapers, advertising, publishing, etc...www.JasonRaish.com